works of wanderlust

Tag: music

  • hobbi-fication

    I resist the label of dilettante.

    That said, it may just be the most accurate representation of my entry-level approach to many of my artistic pursuits. It is, after all, the goal of most anyone to rise above what is largely considered to be a negative branding of one’s effort towards any creative interest. 

    Is labelling something a hobby bad?

    In what is almost certainly a shallow and simplified reply to a deeply complex question, I submit that it is obviously fair for us to grade the effort that one puts into any form of expression, craft, or skilled profession by the level of achievement of an individual in said activity. Yeah. Sure. That is unequivocally fair. We should admire anyone who has created and cultivated their talent to a level largely out of reach from others. We should elevate them in our esteem. We should recoginize achievement where due. And this is even more so the case in a world where such achievement is eclipsed by the corporate patronage that enables it. When nepo-babies like Elon Musk get the credit for great achievement in science and engineering simply because he footed the bill, we very much should look past the douchebag claiming all the credit to those standing in the background who did the actual work, the ones who cultivated their talent and knowledge, sold their skills to a company and built amazing things. So, in brief, I very much do think we should respect game, but also work much harder to respect the game that did the actual work. Our society is really fucked up at this.

    Those folks are at the top of their game.

    I bring this up because yet again I find myself dabbling shallow into one of my many hobbies: music. I wrote about this the other day, and yet in every shape and form you should consider me nothing more than a dabbler in music. A hobbyist. A—gulp—dilettante. I am not a professional. I am not a recording artist. I am not destined to find my way into your playlist any time soon. This is not false modesty. It is the honest confession of a guy who knows just enough to fake his way through. I can play, but that’s about it.

    Is that a bad thing?

    No. I don’t think so. But not everyone would agree. And what it brings me to is the subject of gatekeeping.

    Let’s steer this away from art and music into another example I have found in the wilds of my hobby-filled life: running.

    Running is rife with gatekeeping. It’s a sport, after all. It is, like many things, a skill-based effort to which one’s achievement is directly correlated to many things but deeply, deeply correlated to the quantifiable number of hours and kilometers one runs in training. (There is nuance here, there always is, but bear with me.) Runners who train more generally win more races, while the rest of us earn a participation medal and say things like “it was only a race against myself and my own fitness.”

    And you know what? Lots of, if not most, runners are awesome, welcoming people. I run in a group and our philosophy is that literally anyone is welcome to join in a run and so long as you’re making any effort whatsoever then if we’re faster than you we’ll loop back to keep you with the group. We try very hard not to gatekeep the sport. It’s not perfect but I think it mostly works.

    But I have found so much of the opposite. There are people who train harder and then literally snub those who are slower, run lesser distances, or don’t pass some random threshold of achievement. Which in itself is the tricky point and leading into the point I’m trying to extract from this example. In running there is almost always someone who is faster. There is literally only one fastest guy and one fastest gal—in the whold damn world—and it’s measured and recorded on the regular.  Unless you are that person, you are not the fastest and that “some random threshold” that you have set down as a bar over which there are “runners” on one side and “posers” on the other is just exactly that: random and arbitrary.  Such has been true of every example of gatekeeping I have encountered in running in my eighteen years participating in the sport. Some gatekeeping dork who runs such and such speed or so and so distance looks down on everyone slower than them, and looks up to everyone faster than them, and says there, that’s the line. They’re serious, but these people who don’t achieve as they do are apparently lesser and don’t get the label that goes along with the sport. They’re all hobbyist joggers and I’m the serious runner. 

    Again, this is not common, but these special folks definitely exist and definitely show up at run club or meet ups or race corals or wherever. And they are everywhere. I once had a quasi-coworker who was this very person and who literally looked down their nose at me, rolled their eyes and gave an impolite “hmmph” in race coral because they knew my expected finish was slower than them.

    There is a gate to what is what and they are standing at it keeping it free of the riffraff who don’t make the cut. They are slamming it in the faces of the so-called dilettants and hobbyists behind them. If you are gatekeeping or a gatekeeper type of person, just know that there is probably a special gate for folks like you in the afterlife that you might not be able to walk through either. Rant done.

    How does this relate to music and art and all that other stuff?

    My point is just that there are gatekeepers in everything, for every interest, for any craft, profession, sport, talent, skill, whatever. There will always be those that stand with their hands up and out to tell everyone behind them in acquiring those skills or training those abilities, that to be lesser than the gatekeeper makes one a lesser: overall it makes one merely a hobbyist or a dilettant.

    And on the other side, there will be many more who lend a hand, reach backwards to teach or share knowledge, to build community and extend interest in the field. Game trains the next wave of game, as it were.

    But Brad, you say, one could argue that the label is a little more subtle than raw acheivement. Maybe it is more than gatekeeping on quantifiable ability, right? Maybe there is a vibe associated with hobbyism or being called out as a dilettant. An unseriousness. The dabbler is the guy who is knocking on the walls of the clubhouse trying to get in, but is more interested in the label than the skill. They want to call themselves a runner, but only so they can post race pics on social media. They want to be called an artist but don’t even try to cultivate a style or signature. They desire to fill a chair in a band so they can invite people to watch, but don’t pick up their instrument between concerts to put in the rigor of practice required to hone the talent. What do we make of these people? Are the gatekeepers among us correct in locking the door to folks like that?

    As a certified hobbyist I can tell you that people who are truly terrible and trying to infiltrate a field of art or expertise for giggles and false cred are probably rare exceptions, possibily crafty sociopaths, and there are likely more signs of their unseriousness than simply weak ass skills in a field. 

    What I can also tell you is that more often the apparent unseriousness of a hobbyist is likely due to an extremely high barrier to entry in this modern achievement-based online world. Someone just learning art is never going to be as talented as 95% of the posts in their feed. Someone working full time and trying to train for a marathon on the weekends is never going to beat the twenty-two year old with a track scholarship who is training his ass off and earning the world records.  Someone who picked up an instrument at forty and can only get lessons from instructors used to teaching eight year olds while juggling family life is almost definitely never going to perform in the city’s premier symphony.

    We need to give these folks a break and simply welcome them to the club as people with a shared interest, no?

    As noted, I have been dabbling in one of my hobbies again: music. I have steered my summer into trying to build up my personal knowledge of musical theory and composition, including improvisation and sound design. I haven’t put down my violin, of course, but I have poked the bear of electronic synths and all the complex terminology and methodology around them.  My first blush at this popular but enigmatic field, tho, has been one of the steepest barriers to entry I have encountered in a while. There are countless jargon-laden explanations of the technical features of these tools but when it comes to using them to create music the most common piece of advice I have found is “just play around until you find your sound”—which, of course, is like me telling a new runner just to lace up and jog around until they get faster, find a race and win it. 

    I  have been doing art for most of my life, but when I got interested in watercolours a few years ago I quickly found colour theory tutorials, advice on layering paints, books on technique with endless examples and exercises, and of course classes at the local community centre. 

    When I started running, I joined a run club and learned about gear and training schedules and went for speed training sessions and hill training sessions and got into cross training with friends. 

    “Just play around” was on the table, but was never the whole buffet.  

    I wouldn’t necessarily think of this lack of resources as gatekeeping, but there is a kind of exclusivity to entry that resembles gatekeeping when a hobby, any hobby, doesn’t reach back a hand to pull the dilettants in the direction of something more. 

    I resist the label dilittant, not because it wrong or I am above it, but because it implies an unwelcomeness to some secret club. Far be it from me to judge an entire community based on my week of experience looking for the front door, banging on the walls and asking how do I get inside, how do I learn, how to I get better guys?!  I aspire to rise above and hone skills but I definitely doubt I will get there by dabbling and just “playing around” as it were. 

    For now, it will not disuade me from the effort—and maybe for some that is the whole point, to create a barrier to keep the field small and pure—but as a guy who has done his best to elevate others in fields where I do excel, where I am less likely to be kept from passing the closed gate, I have been the one reaching back to train and pull people along so I naively hope and assume that every field, every art, every sport, every endeavor of creativity or skill has people like that—one just needs to find them—and too, resist the label to keep at it.

    Hobbification is not a bug, after all, it’s a feature of a strong system and the key to bringing new people and new talent on board. And I honestly think that any field worthy of study or interest has reached maturity when it recognizes this and says sure, just “play around” but we’re here when you need to take the next step. 

  • hobbies defined, or why investing in things you love is not wasting your money

    I keep telling myself I am not a musician. Call it imposter syndrome, but despite having all the music-connected skills that I have, I still just think of it as eclectic side-hobby.

    Here’s the thing tho. 

    I’ve been playing in a real orchestra for the better part of my 40s. (Second violin, in case you didn’t know that about me.) I am literally in a kind-of-band with a chair to sit in and a part  to play and a rehearsal schedule to follow. It’s a real thing.

    And those bona fides extend beyond a bit of bowing too: I read music, I played the alto sax in grade school, can plink out the basics on a piano, own a chanter, used to consider myself something of a penny-whistle enthusiast, and definitely pay a mean recorder. 

    On top of that, I have done some loose digital composition of electronic music, exclusively in software of course (and as will become clear in the next few paragraphs) and never really more than dabbling in vibes and personal entertainment.

    I like music. I make music. I play music. I perform music. I buy music. I am kinda, sorta a musician. Self-doubt be damned. 

    I bring this up now because I have been sporadically poking at product and functional research around hardware synths. About five years ago I found a channel on youtube where this guy would collect, restore and review retro keyboard synths. It’s a weird hobby, really. And yet watching all those videos took me down a rabbit hole of interesting related topics, most of it looping back to the fact that I have been a electronic music fan all the way back to my CD-buying years and have a respectable collection of collected tracks and more. Simply, I like this stuff and found the art of it fascinating. There is no bottom to that rabbit hole, but my five years of bumbling, fumbling research of course had me playing around with software composition on my computer again and ultimately realizing that what I really wanted was something more physical—tanglible, real. The answer to that bit of musical envy, of course, is a hardware synth with lots of buttons to press and knobs to turn and samples to shape, sitting in a dark basement as one does when composing electronic music. I’ve been researching my options to buy one for the better part of a couple years, watching vids and reading reviews and trying to understand the technology with enough expertise to buy one that makes sense for me as a kinda musician diletante.

    Synths tend to look like pianos and can imitate them, but even in their most simplistic beginner formats are all manner of gateways to electronic sound manipulation, creating digitally aucoustic sound patterns, linking them to an input mechanism, looping mechanism, and other sound enveloping technology things. It all outputs as something we all would recognize, from dance to trance to ambient chill to 8-bit game soundtracks.

    The problem is that we already have two pianos in our house. And. And. And! And I hear you folks who know what I’m about to explain rolling your eyes: synths are not pianos, even tho they often look very much the same.  My point here tho is that if were ever to invest a couple hundred bucks into a synth I would need to make it very clear to the other members of our house that no, I was not buying another piano, I was actually buying a synth and it’s almost as much to explain to someone who ask why are you buying those new pants when you already have a toothbrush at home? You get it or you don’t. 

    The other (not so minor) problem is that I am currently between incomes. I hope to be gainfully employed again by the end of the summer if all goes well, but these things are couched in vast levels of uncontrollable uncertainty that have almost zero correlation to the effort involved. If I had a regular income a new synth wouldn’t even register as a purchase: it’s a couple tanks of gas or a week of groceries, and even jobless we are just fine financially thank you very much anyways. Yeah, it’s a bit more money than splurging on a new video game, but only marginally more—and definitely a better investment. 

    (Look at me talking myself into this.)

    And yet, after multiple years of research on synths I find myself in a hot spot of a dilemma: I have pretty much decided on the particular synth I want to buy—eventually or sooner—and yes I do have money set aside for mad irrational purchases, and oh it turns out its on sale this week even as speculation about store stock repleshiment dwindles on the verge of tariff-related price increases and—well— you might even recall that I am kind of sort of actually a musician and it’s would be a fun new instrument to play around with, no?  

    I’m going to go into the store to look at it later this morning. And it would be something like an impulse buy, but too, one that I have quietly researched and pondered for at least the last two years. Still a guilty pleasure. A musical guilty pleasure. 

    So there’s the rub.

    People who define themselves as things should invest in those things, right?

    I am an artist, so I buy paint and paper and take classes.

    I am a writer, so I have lovely keyboards and document management skills.

    I am a musician, so I play music and explore sound.

    We each and all of us define ourselves by a such a finite list of attributes in our life. My relatives camp and so they buy expensive RVs, htings to stock them with and rent lots at the lake.  I have friends who buy and maintain expensive sports cars. I have other friends who travel the world, cost be damned, because they are enthusiasts for such things. I have friends who pay too much for tickets to sports games or concerts because those things are how they define themselves to themselves and to the universe. These are not all things I would buy, but who would begrudge any of them for indulging in their hobbies and shaping their lives around non-functional investments of time and money? 

    We work, or don’t, and we can too easily live our lives in a purely functional way. And even those of us who nary can afford to do so sometimes allocate money that would best be spent on other things, smarter more functional purchases, to these pieces of equipment or supply or training or content that help us better define ourselves as something less purely functional and bound to sheer survival: these things that define what we call our hobbies or interests, perhaps even our humanity.

    And those are the things that let us explain to the world that we are more than even what we sometimes believe to be true ourselves.

  • media review: weird al

    I don’t even know what prompted it, but last night turned into Weird Al night at our house.

    I wandered upstairs to the teevee room and the Kid had started watching the most recent of his movies, “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” which I had added to our digital collection a while back when it finally made its way into general circulation. If you haven’t yet checked that one out, it stars Radcliff of Harry Potter fame channeling some very weird al energy into an over-the-top fictionalized biopic of the titular recording artist’s life. I seem to recall it was based on a Funny or Die sketch piece, and while not to everyone’s taste, caught my attention on a flight over the Atlantic a couple years ago and prompted me to go looking to have a closer look when I wasn’t fighting the cradling embrace of an economy class international flight. This isn’t a plot rehash. If you are a Weird Al fan, the kind who bought Dare to Be Stupid on cassette tape in the eighties, you’re going to find something to laugh at in this flick.

    Of course, our fun didn’t stop there.

    The movie finished and the kid opened up Youtube to look up a couple videos—rapidly prompting a small existential crisis when she realized that the video for Tacky was tagged as being a literal decade old. We had worn a permanent groove in the digital tracks listenting to Mandatory Fun album on repeat back when she was about seven and I suppose marking your mortality in Weird Al album release dates may sound a little nutty, but we’re that. I don’t know if I won or lost the fatherhood award last night as she reached peak epiphany on just how much of her childhood was built on the foundation of Weird Al.

    Heck, I said just as we should have all been getting ready to go to bed, did you know he made a movie in the eighties. It was called UHF. I have the DVD.

    It’s a good thing UHF is under two hours or I would not have made it to Starbucks this morning for my coffee. We watched the whole thing in its this-thing-hasn’t-aged-great but its still somehow funny glory. The kid literally screamed “WHAT! Nooooo!” at the screen when the phrase “Today we’re going to teach poodles how to fly…” blurted out of the teevee. And I mean really, if Weird Al isn’t evoking raw emotional screams from teenagers what are we even doing here?

    Sadly Mr. Yankovic isn’t strolling into Western Canada for any tours any time soon—I checked—or I would have bought tickets even as the credits were rolling around midnight last night. Seriously.